


Careful

by KyberChronicles



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Awkward Romance, F/M, Mutual Pining, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-27
Updated: 2018-03-27
Packaged: 2019-04-13 19:17:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14119113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KyberChronicles/pseuds/KyberChronicles
Summary: She’s so careful with him at first.It’s her fingers wrapped around his hand-- not too tight, but not exactly gentle, either.  Cassian lies in his bed in the medbay and watches her, focusing on this one part of his body that has suddenly stopped hurting.





	Careful

She’s so careful with him at first.  

It’s her fingers wrapped around his hand-- not too tight, but not exactly gentle, either.  Cassian lies in his bed in the medbay and watches her, focusing on this one part of his body that has suddenly stopped hurting. 

The damned machines give him away, though.  Every time Jyn touches his skin, the beeping starts and that damned droid comes in asking if he needs pain medication and his face flushes so red that she chuckles, and Force-damn-it, she  _ knows _ .

He supposes it should tell him something, though, that she keeps doing it.

But they don’t talk about it.  He has no idea what he’d say and he doesn’t think that she does either. He figures they’re both so touch-starved and unused to--

Whatever this is.  Whatever they are. Companions? Partners? Friends? Comrades? Strangers only connected by their shared trauma (and survival, he supposes, though he’s not sure his has stuck yet)? No. Not that. Nothing really seems to fit.  

\-- that maybe not talking about it is better, anyway.  

So his time in the medbay is punctuated by her hands on him.

Two days after he wakes up, she’s sitting next to his bed with a determined look on her face that makes him wonder what she’s up to.  Nevertheless, he’s completely not ready for the way she slides her fingers between his, intertwining them, the pads of each digit pressing against his palm.

(And then it’s the machines again, but it’s so bad that the droid makes one of the nurses come in and run all these tests on him while Jyn just sits there, looking smug.)

He gets his revenge the day after that when he quickly flips his hand over when she approaches, and when their palms press together and he slides his fingers between hers, he slowly rubs his thumb across her skin.  The breath she lets out isn’t as satisfying as his machines going off, he figures, but...

now  _ he _ knows (even though doesn’t know what to do with the information).

* * *

 

She is there when they remove his bandages.  

First, the blaster wound on his side, and they’re both already flushed pink by so much more of his skin being revealed to her (his whole  _ chest _ , for kriff’s sake, and part of him wants to ask her to leave but when roses seem to bloom across her cheeks, he’s too fascinated to remember to do so).  

When the nurse leaves, Jyn stands next to his cot and briefly touches her cold fingers to the scar on his side.  Only her gaze touches the others that litter his chest and shoulders.

The machines are gone now, so all he has to do is try to breathe normal.

He fails, and there’s that knowing look again.

He’s such a fool.  

(But without that scar, she might not be there at all.)

Then it’s the large bandages across his back, and he’s already breathing heavy and sweating from the pain and exertion of just sitting straight up.  He can’t look at her while she witnesses this humiliation but he also can’t bear to ask her to leave, so he just closes his eyes.

They’re peeling the material off of him so kriffing slowly.  He clenches his teeth, his fists.

They lean him forward so that they can reach the bottom edges of the bandages, down by his tailbone.  The nurses are holding most of his weight, but his unused, healing muscles are screaming with the strain.

He feels her sit down on the bed in front of him.  If he opens his eyes, he’s afraid he won’t like what he sees in her expression, so he keeps them tightly closed.

“Cassian. Breathe.”

But then he can’t, at  _ all _ , because she’s clumsily pushing his hair away from his forehead with shaking hands.  His scalp tingles where she touches, and when her fingers stroke past his temple and around his ear he has to bite back an actual groan of pleasure.  

The pain is still there, but very far away.

“Can you lean forward a bit more?” one of the nurses asks, and he takes a deep breath to prepare for it.

Jyn slides closer to him on the bed.  Her hands gently, slowly pull his head down to lean on her shoulder.  It hurts, but then she resumes running her fingers through the shorter strands of his hair at the base of his head and, oh.

It takes all of his willpower to keep himself from nuzzling into her neck.  She smells like soap and caf and something else that reminds him, strangely, of Fest.  Her strokes are raising goosebumps on his skin and he has a sudden fear that he died back on Scarif, because it feels too good.

The last of the bandages come off, and he feels the nurses poke and prod at the long line of stitches along his spine.  They tell him that he’s healing nicely, that he’ll have to start physical therapy soon, that they need to get him up and walking.  They leave him and Jyn alone, and he reluctantly pulls away from her and opens his eyes.

She’s watching him, but there’s no pity there.  

“All right?” she asks, gruffly.  She pulls her hands away from his head as if she’s been burned, as if she’s just realized what she had been doing.

He nods, once.  

“Thank you,” he tells her, and takes her hand in both of his.  He traces his thumb in a slow circle over her skin, and hears her breath stutter.  But he doesn’t let go for a few moments more.

He’s eventually given a walker and ordered by one of the droids to take “15-20 minute perambulations” throughout the day.  She joins him, sometimes, jokingly calling him “Old Man Andor”, “Grandpa”. She doesn’t touch him or try to help, even though he breathes heavily and cold-sweats through the pain.  She says nothing when he has to stop for a break, or when a grunt of pain escapes him.

He appreciates this more than he thinks she realizes.

And then, one afternoon, Jyn appears in his doorway.  

“The Death Star,” she breathes.  “It’s here.”

She comes to his bedside, helps him stand.  The nurses or droids are usually the ones to do it, but there’s no time.  They grasp each other’s forearms and he slowly rises to his feet.

Looking down at her, he realizes that not much has changed in these few days.  They’re still wounded and broken soldiers, wishing for more time, as their world blows apart around them.  

He’s slow, without the walker, but they hobble through the base together.  His arm is around her shoulders and he’s pressed tightly to her side, and it’s just so similar to Scarif that he wants to laugh.

They thought that they had escaped.  How silly of them.

She brings them outside, and the fresh air gives him a moment of relief before his gaze flicks upwards to the massive silhouette looming in the sky above them.  Fear twists through his chest and he grips Jyn’s shoulder tighter, breathing deeply and focusing on the points where her body touches his (or where his touches hers).

“They’ve sent almost all of the pilots up there to try and destroy it,” she tells him.

He looks down at her.

“The weakness? The- the reactor module?” he asks.  Draven has refused to brief him on anything yet.

She nods.  “They found it in the plans.  The area’s small, but… it’s there.”

She sounds relieved, and he understands.

“You completed your father’s mission, Jyn,” he reminds her.   _ He would be so proud of you.   _ I _ am proud of you. _

She’s silent for awhile.  

“Let’s hope it wasn’t all for nothing,” she murmurs, staring upwards at the sky again.

“Hope?” Cassian asks, and wonders how he can smile when the world could end at any moment.

Jyn fixes him with glare, but there’s no heat behind it.

“You’re a bad influence.”

Then he laughs,  _ actually laughs _ , with the Death Star hanging above them.  And if that isn’t proof that the galaxy is a strange but sometimes wonderful place, he isn’t sure what is.  So Cassian pulls Jyn into his arms.

Because, after all, their death could come at any moment.

Because they’ve been here before, and if the Empire is going to take them at all, it’s going to take them together.

Because he remembers too well how she feels pressed against him, how their hearts pound together and it feels more right than anything else the galaxy has ever given him.

Because, against his better judgement, he craves each touch of her fingers, each brush of her skin.

It’s different this time, though: she’s so much shorter this way, and he feels her arms go around his torso and her hands curl into the material of his shirt on his lower back.  Her face is pressed against his chest, right over his heart.

(It’s clearly trying to beat its way past his sternum to get to her.)

He has one hand curved around the middle of her back and the other cradling her head.  Before he loses his nerve, he presses his mouth to her hair and holds her tighter.

For the second time in his life, he’s struck with wonder that he could die like this: not alone, but in the arms of an incredible woman who somehow sees something beyond an assassin, beyond an obedient solder, in him.  

But this time, he’s less at peace with the threat of impending death.  He had been so sure of it on Scarif. There was no way they’d escape, and the peace of accomplishing their mission and accepting his demise had washed over him.  Perhaps it had also been the relief of knowing there was an end in sight for agony he felt from his broken bones and bruises.

This time he feels a powerful yearning in his gut.  

They had lived, and he was given a taste of what life would be like with her, if she allowed that.  This tentative, growing whatever between them-- he wanted to know what it meant, where it was going.  He wanted to know her in moments away from battle, away from the medbay, away from death and destruction.  He wanted to see if she’d still want to reach for him in those moments, when they weren’t so desperate for comfort they both gave into weakness.  

What if he learned that it wasn’t comfort that made them desperate for touch, but something else?

Something more?

He finds himself begging the Force to give the Rebellion this victory, but not for his sake.  He was a murderer that didn’t deserve anything from the woman in his arms, but  _ she _ deserved it all.  

The galaxy was a cruel and unforgiving place, but he begs for it to be just fair enough so that Jyn wouldn’t die knowing that her family’s sacrifice was for nothing.  If they should fail now, they would’ve been better off perishing on the beaches of Scarif, never knowing that they died in vain.

Suddenly, she’s letting go of him, and he panics for a moment before he realizes she’s sliding her hands in between their bodies and pulling her necklace out of her shirt.  He loosens his hold on her so she can grasp at the kyber crystal that hangs from the end of it.

“Cassian,” she whispers.  “Give me your hand.”

He obeys, and she pushes the crystal into his palm and curls his fingers around it.  Then she covers his hand with the both of hers, and holds them there.

The intimacy of the moment nearly takes his breath away, and he pulls her close again with his free hand.  They both look upwards, watching and waiting for the tell-tale green light that signifies the end of the world.

But instead, an enormous, silent explosion rips across the sky over them.  

Neither of them make a sound as they watch the fireball expand, until Jyn shudders and exhales.  Cassian looks down at her, and she’s clearly fighting tears.

He might be, too, but it’s been so long since he cried that he’s not sure he’d recognize the warning signs.

He looks up again and sends his thanks to Galen Erso, wherever the Force had taken him, for his bravery, his service, and for the woman in his arms.

And then Jyn is nudging him, their hands still clasped together between them.

“Cassian,” she wonders. “What happens now?”

**Author's Note:**

> This is sort of an expansion of a short fic I posted to Tumblr called "Remembering", and yes, it's focusing primarily on both Jyn and Cassian being touch-starved.
> 
> If you want to see the original fic, I'm "KyberChronicles" on Tumblr, too!
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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